PALM BEACH, Fla. – Radio giant Rush Limbaugh says advertisers who fled his show after he called a Georgetown graduate student a “slut” are getting “creamed” financially.

“The people who have been hurt on this program are the advertisers who left! They’ve been creamed,” Limbaugh said this afternoon.

“The advertisers who’ve really been hurt are the ones who’ve abandoned here. I just assume everybody understood that. Let me tell you: We have 22 million people here [in our listening audience] who have stopped patronizing these people … . It’s major in many instances, the harm that has been inflicted.”

Among the first major advertisers to drop Limbaugh’s show were ProFlowers, Quicken Loans, mattress retailers Sleep Train and Sleep Number, software maker Citrix Systems, data-backup provider Carbonite and online legal-document company LegalZoom. Dozens of others, mostly in local markets and not nationally, followed suit. (Pinterest.com has a list of many sponsors who dropped the show here.)

Limbaugh didn’t provide any specific details to quantify how much the fleeing advertisers had been injured, explaining he was “uncomfortable” with the notion of advertising being harmed.

“The whole point of it is to work!” he exclaimed. “The whole point of it is to be helping – and it was helping. It always has been here. It’s the reason there is such a long list of people that want to be on the program. But the ones that left? This is a very sophisticated audience. They go out there and make it that they’re leaving because of some trumped up, phony issue and they hear about it in the form of cancellations. Which doesn’t really make me comfortable, but it’s a free market. So those people have been hurt. They hurt themselves. The advertisers that hung around have not been harmed. Their businesses are still thriving.”

Many of Limbaugh’s listeners have thought the broadcaster had taken a financial hit due to a boycott campaign promoted by leftists at Media Matters and elsewhere. They have been targeting his advertisers in the wake of national controversy for his calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute” as she pushed for insurance-covered birth control. He has since apologized for those remarks.

The head of Clear Channel, the national distributor of Limbaugh’s program, says the outrage over Limbaugh’s remarks was “part of the normal day-to-day of talk radio.”

“Rush is Rush and radio is radio,” CEO Bob Pittman told the Associated Press, referring to the host as “the king.”

The Sacramento Bee identified the company seeking to return as Sleep Train, but Limbaugh spokesman Brian Glicklich released an email suggesting a permanent split between the parties:

“Rush received your requests personally,” said the email. “Unfortunately, your public comments were not well received by our audience, and did not accurately portray either Rush Limbaugh’s character or the intent of his remarks. Thus, we regret to inform you that Rush will be unable to endorse Sleep Train in the future.”

Limbaugh maintains that those on the political left orchestrating the onslaught against him are feigning any previous financial support for the companies they’re trying to intimidate.

“These so-called angry consumers are not patronizing any of these sponsors. They’re just calling and then threatening them,” he said today. “These so-called angry consumers (who are not angry consumers, they’re just Democrat Party operatives or people sympathetic to the Democrat Party) [who] are just calling and harassing and threatening them. They’re not buying anything from these sponsors.”

Limbaugh directed listeners to DefendSmallBusiness.com, a website run by the Small Business Authority, which is fighting back against the anti-Limbaugh campaign promoted by the leftist group Media Matters.

The website has numerous contacts for elected officials, national news outlets and even provides direct emails and a phone number for people to call Media Matters.

“Ask them why they are at war with small businesses,” the site says. “Be civil, don’t sink to their level. Call again if you think they didn’t listen to you carefully.”

Limbaugh says targeting his radio show and advertisers are nothing new, but it’s never been this focused because opponents “smell blood in the water.”

“And this is the first time that small business has not cowered,” Limbaugh said, referring to DefendSmallBusiness.com.

“Honest to God, folks. In 23-plus years this is the first time small business has not cowered and caved and gone away. And thought if they just shut up, it will go away. Because you know what they’ve realized? It won’t go away. The next show will just be the next target, the next host or what have you. In the meantime they’re not gonna be able to advertise their business. And they know that it works, and they want to be able to do that.”